“I have had a long, long life,” 18-year-old Johnson says. “I have come way too far from 12 years old.”

Twelve is significant for Johnson. It is around that time that he experienced the first in a string of expulsions that would bounce him from school to school amid a jolt of loss, delinquency and defiance.

It is also the age that Johnson formed the relationship that may shape the rest of his life. That year, the Big Brothers Big Sisters program paired him with a mentor, an athlete named Joel Ward, whose purpose was to serve as a stabilizing presence.